A hug is one of the most basic ways humans can express affection. As hugs are so common, a natural progression of robot development is to have robots one day hug humans as seamlessly as these intimate human-human interactions occur. This project’s purpose is to evaluate human responses to different robot physical characteristics and hugging behaviors. Specifically, we aim to test the hypothesis that a warm, soft, touch-sensitive PR2 humanoid robot can provide humans with satisfying hugs by matching both their hugging pressure and their hugging duration. Thirty participants experienced and evaluated twelve hugs with the robot, divided into three randomly ordered trials that focused on physical robot char- acteristics and nine randomly ordered trials with varied hug pressure and duration. We found that people prefer soft, warm hugs over hard, cold hugs. Furthermore, users prefer hugs that physically squeeze them and release immediately when they are ready for the hug to end.

A method for generating a body shape, comprising the steps: - receiving one or more linguistic descriptors related to the body shape; - retrieving an association between the one or more linguistic descriptors and a body shape; and - generating the body shape, based on the association.

A method for providing a three-dimensional body model which may be applied for an animation, based on a moving body, wherein the method comprises providing a parametric three-dimensional body model, which allows shape and pose variations; applying a standard set of body markers; optimizing the set of body markers by generating an additional set of body markers and applying the same for providing 3D coordinate marker signals for capturing shape and pose of the body and dynamics of soft tissue; and automatically providing an animation by processing the 3D coordinate marker signals in order to provide a personalized three-dimensional body model, based on estimated shape and an estimated pose of the body by means of predicted marker locations.

Teleoperated surgical robots such as the Intuitive da Vinci Surgical System facilitate minimally invasive surgeries, which decrease risk to patients. However, these systems can be difficult to learn, and existing training curricula on surgical simulators do not offer students the realistic experience of a full operation. This paper presents an augmented-reality video training platform for the da Vinci that will allow trainees to rehearse any surgery recorded by an expert. While the trainee operates a da Vinci in free space, they see their own instruments overlaid on the expert video. Tools are identified in the source videos via color segmentation and kernelized correlation filter tracking, and their depth is calculated from the da Vinci’s stereoscopic video feed. The user tries to follow the expert’s movements, and if any of their tools venture too far away, the system provides instantaneous visual feedback and pauses to allow the user to correct their motion. The trainee can also rewind the expert video by bringing either da Vinci tool very close to the camera. This combined and augmented video provides the user with an immersive and interactive training experience.

Robots that work alongside humans might be more effective if they could forge a strong social bond with their human partners. Hand-clapping games and other forms of rhythmic social-physical interaction may foster human-robot teamwork, but the design of such interactions has scarcely been explored. At the HRI 2017 conference, we will showcase several such interactions taken from our recent work with the Rethink Robotics Baxter Research Robot, including tempo-matching, Simon says, and Pat-a-cake-like games. We believe conference attendees will be both entertained and intrigued by this novel demonstration of social-physical HRI.

Surgical Endoscopy, 31(Supplement 1):S28, Extended abstract presented as a podium presentation at the Annual Meeting of the Society of American Gastrointestinal and Endoscopic Surgeons (SAGES), Springer, Houston, USA, March 2017 (misc)

Abstract

Introduction: Minimally invasive surgery has revolutionized surgical practice, but challenges remain. Trainees must acquire complex technical skills while minimizing patient risk, and surgeons must maintain their skills for rare procedures. These challenges are magnified in pediatric surgery due to the smaller spaces, finer tissue, and relative dearth of both inanimate and virtual simulators. To build technical expertise, trainees need opportunities for deliberate practice with specific performance feedback, which is typically provided via tedious human grading. This study aimed to validate a novel motion-tracking system and machine learning algorithm for automatically evaluating trainee performance on a pediatric laparoscopic suturing task using a 1–5 OSATS Overall Skill rating.
Methods: Subjects (n=14) ranging from medical students to fellows per- formed one or two trials of an intracorporeal suturing task in a custom pediatric laparoscopy training box (Fig. 1) after watching a video of ideal performance by an expert. The position and orientation of the tools and endoscope were recorded over time using Ascension trakSTAR magnetic motion-tracking sensors, and both instrument grasp angles were recorded over time using flex sensors on the handles. The 27 trials were video-recorded and scored on the OSATS scale by a senior fellow; ratings ranged from 1 to 4. The raw motion data from each trial was processed to calculate over 200 preliminary motion parameters. Regularized least-squares regression (LASSO) was used to identify the most predictive parameters for inclusion in a regression tree. Model performance was evaluated by leave-one-subject-out cross validation, wherein the automatic scores given to each subject’s trials (by a model trained on all other data) are compared to the corresponding human rater scores.
Results: The best-performing LASSO algorithm identified 14 predictive parameters for inclusion in the regression tree, including completion time, linear path length, angular path length, angular acceleration, grasp velocity, and grasp acceleration. The final model’s raw output showed a strong positive correlation of 0.87 with the reviewer-generated scores, and rounding the output to the nearest integer yielded a leave-one-subject-out cross-validation accuracy of 77.8%. Results are summarized in the confusion matrix (Table 1).
Conclusions: Our novel motion-tracking system and regression model automatically gave previously unseen trials overall skill scores that closely match scores from an expert human rater. With additional data and further development, this system may enable creation of a motion-based training platform for pediatric laparoscopic surgery and could yield insights into the fundamental components of surgical skill.

The Proton Pack is a portable visuo-haptic surface interaction recording device that will be used to collect a vast multimodal dataset, intended for robots to use as part of an approach to understanding the world around them. In order to collect a useful dataset, we want to pick a suitable interaction duration for each surface, noting the tradeoff between data collection resources and completeness of data. One interesting approach frames the data collection process as an online learning problem, building an incremental surface model and using that model to decide when there is enough data. Here we examine how to do such online surface modeling and when to stop collecting data, using kinetic friction as a first domain in which to apply online modeling.

The present invention are methods for fabrication of micro- and/or nano-scale adhesive fibers and their use for movement and manipulation of objects. Further disclosed is a method of manipulating a part by providing a manipulation device with a plurality of fibers, where each fiber has a tip with a flat surface that is parallel to a backing layer, contacting the flat surfaces on an object, moving the object to a new location, then disengaging the tips from the object.

Our goal is to understand the principles of Perception, Action and Learning in autonomous systems that successfully interact with complex environments and to use this understanding to design future systems